


Snapshots

by Saziikins



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 12:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saziikins/pseuds/Saziikins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg looks through the many photographs he has taken of Sherlock down the years. And then notices something he has never seen before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a month ago and then opted not to post it because of the sheer sappiness of it all. Then read it back and realised it's not quite as sappy as I remembered. Actually, I kind of liked some of it. So I thought I'd share it. And actually, a bit of fluff is no bad thing.

The folders remained untouched on his computer for months at a time, until, after a drink or two, the impulse to open them got too great. The folders’ names were standard, unchanged from when he had bought the laptop. ‘My Pictures’ and ‘My Videos’. And there, his life was stored in little icons. A life reduced to moments, stolen seconds caught on a camera phone. 

The folders were labelled by month and year, some months empty. He wasn’t sure if those months had been joyless and unpleasant, or whether he had been so involved in the pleasures of life that he forgot the existence of a camera.

Regardless, sometimes he craved a reminder of what he had been doing in August 2008, or the winter of 2009. 

There were pictures of his wife, stolen images, when she didn’t know he was taking photos of her. Her eyes closed, hair messy around her shoulders. Images of a woman who had once been his everything, surrounding his senses in expensive perfume, lips tasting of wine and sweet chapstick. 

But even in those pictures from 2006, she was a distant figure, her smile missing from the photographs. The pictures were taken from doorways while she fixed her hair in the other room, from the other side of the living room while she sat on the floor re-arranging the DVDs. The pictures didn’t show her whole face, just the back or side of her head, as though he was only ever looking in on her life, not joining her in it. 

And while the pictures of her showed only distance, the pictures of Sherlock reinforced a heady, intoxicating mix of superhero and antihero. They showed the genius inside a man lacking humanity. The addict, the man stumbling through life, the man with needs so great, yet needs which went unfulfilled. 

Those images made Greg sad. They were taken when he was high, when he was scratching his skin so hard that it bled. They showed the scars on his skin, the loss of life in his eyes, a man so haunted by his very existence. 

Time and time again, Greg deleted them and then took them back out of the Deleted Items folder. He kept them there as a reminder for Sherlock, to show him how far he’d come. Yet Sherlock had never seen them. 

A reminder for Greg then, perhaps, instead. A reminder that he could be good, he could be of some use. A reminder that Sherlock had chosen to work with him, and allowed Greg to try to fix him, try to make him better. 

Pictures of Sherlock at Christmases gone by, as best man at the wedding, and alone in a hospital bed. Videos of him off his head, making rambling statements, high and struggling. Videos Greg could not bear to watch. Videos he simply could not delete. 

Who knew why? He certainly didn’t. 

Somehow those parts of Sherlock were his, and his alone. Pictures and films from times before John, before Molly, before Mrs Hudson, before all of them. A time when Greg was what Sherlock had needed, when he was the one half-carrying him home. When he was the one to hold damp flannels to his forehead, to tuck him into bed, to lie with him and talk with until the early hours. 

Memories sometimes he could scarcely believe were real. Memories no one else would believe, unless they had been there too. 

With one last look at a picture of Sherlock from all those years ago, sprawled out on Greg’s sofa, fast asleep with a book open on his chest, he closed down the folders. 

He had loved him then, he knew. When he was still married, when his heart should have belonged to his wife. Sherlock had become his focus. He had never wanted to change him, only ever wanted to help him reach his full potential. 

He loved him still. In the loneliness of his life, it was contact from Sherlock which continued to warm his bones, brought light to his days, gave him a reason to smile. It was Sherlock who infuriated him, and yet saved him so many times. 

He reached for his beer and stopped when he checked his emails. There was a new message from Mary, with pictures from the recent Christening attached. With a sigh, he began to flick through them. Most of the pictures were of the proud parents, baby on their knee, in their arms, pulling Mary’s hair. It reminded him of a life un-lived, of a dream he had once of being a parent, of a family he could only imagine now. 

Pictures of Mrs Hudson, pictures of Molly, pictures of Sherlock, all stood together with the baby. It was Sherlock his eyes were drawn to. He didn’t smile in the pictures, but he seemed content. Wiser, older, more certain than ever. 

Compared to the thin, frenetic creature he had met all those years ago, he had grown into a man with the courage of his convictions, a man who cared, a man who had learned how to love. Because in Greg’s eyes, there was no doubting that he loved John Watson, loved Mary, loved Mrs Hudson, loved Molly, loved the baby and the soft, doting family he had become a part of. 

A final picture then, and it showed Greg stood in the corner of Sherlock’s flat, beside Mrs Hudson who was seated on the sofa, baby in her arms. It was an unguarded moment, a picture none of them knew was being taken. And beyond Greg, Sherlock was stood, but not looking at the child nor at Mrs Hudson. He was looking at him. 

Mouth going dry, Greg zoomed in on his expression. Soft eyes, the faintest of smiles on his lips. Gaze undoubtedly pointed Greg’s way. 

He opened the folders again, and in those pictures where Sherlock was sober and clean, the expression was unmistakably the same, gazing at the camera, but no, not at the camera. Gazing past the camera and at the man behind it. Even when he was clearly impatient with Greg’s picture-taking, there was a softness there in his eyes, a quiet serenity. A peace Greg remembered, but thought he had imagined. 

The videos. The videos he never watched. Only one or two showed Sherlock when he was clean, and it was those he opened. Sherlock babbling, deducing, not knowing the camera was pointed his way. A laugh from Greg as Sherlock’s eyes landed on the phone, no, landed on the man behind the phone. Sherlock rolling his eyes. “Really, Lestrade?” he said, and there it was, the twitch at the corner of his lips. Just a hint of a smile. “Turn that off.” 

“Aw, c’mon, Sherlock,” Greg said. “Gotta keep this for evidence, you know the rules.”

“Off, or you’ll get no more deductions.”

Greg laughed and the video cut out. 

He took a breath. Sipped his beer and opened the most recent picture from the Christening again. And against his better judgement, it was Sherlock’s number he called.

“Lestrade? Case?”

Greg leaned back against the chair, finding his heart unexpectedly racing at the sound of his voice. “No. Nah, nothing like that. Just er… calling. See how you were.”

“Oh. Fine. Why? Is something going on?”

Greg smiled to himself. “You know. Been a few days since the Christening. I just wanted to check you weren’t bored. I know you basically planned the whole thing.”

“Molly gave me a cadaver, I have plenty to do. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have plenty to do?”

“Yeah, always,” Greg replied. “Yeah. Sorry. Just. I was checking in, you know. Nothing else. I’ll leave you to the body and everything.”

“Right. Good.”

“Yeah.” He paused, biting his bottom lip. He knew he should hang up, but the silence lingered between them. Sherlock wasn’t hanging up either. “Did Mary send you the pictures?” he asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, yes, she did. Very er… what’s the word? Posed.”

Greg forced a laugh. “Yeah. Well, that’s the kind of photography you get at these kinds of things.”

“It seems so. Well, I suppose it’s the done thing. It’s John and Mary, they always do the done thing.”

“Right, yeah. Definitely. Well, I should…”

“You weren’t in many pictures,” Sherlock said. 

“No, well, wasn’t asked. It wasn’t my day, anyway.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“I was in one of them. So. They know I was there.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

Greg swallowed. “You were in that one too, I think.”

There was a long pause. “It appears so,” Sherlock finally murmured. 

Greg gripped the phone. “Well, just a picture anyway. Nice to have a reminder of the thing, really.”

“You’re always behind the camera.”

“I prefer that. Don’t need my ugly mug ruining them all.”

There was a pause. “You’ve been looking at them, haven’t you,” Sherlock said, his voice almost soft.

“Mary just sent me them.”

“No. Not those pictures. The other ones.”

Greg rolled his eyes to himself. “I don’t know how you do that,” he muttered. “I don’t know how you know.”

“Mycroft watches your computer.”

“What?”

Sherlock laughed. “I’m joking, Lestrade.”

“Somehow I don’t think you are.”

“I am. Honestly, I wouldn’t allow my brother that level of surveillance. I just happen to know you have a tendency to get nostalgic on a Friday night, following a few beers after work. I suspected that’s why you called.”

“Yeah. I can’t hide anything from you.”

“No. Well, I should go. I have a body.”

“Right. Yeah. Thanks for this.”

“You’re… welcome?”

“Thanks, Sherlock. Goodnight.” Swallowing, Greg hung up the phone. He finished his beer and drank half of another. And then he sent the pictures to Sherlock. Those ones of him looking at Lestrade, those ones of him smiling. 

‘Just thought you might want to be nostalgic too’, Greg wrote in the email. He watched the television for an hour, then brushed his teeth and undressed for bed. He slid in beneath the covers and before he turned the light off, he checked his emails for a reply from Sherlock. He had one.

It was only a picture of Greg. Greg from some years ago, since his hair wasn’t as grey. He was sat in Sherlock’s old flat, case files spread out over the carpet. He had a bruise under his eye from a criminal who had hit him on his way past him at the crime scene. And Sherlock had wanted a picture of the bruise, so he could try to judge how large the man’s hands were. 

But this photo wasn’t zoomed in on the bruise. It was just Greg sat on the floor, case files spread around him. And it was him, smiling. Not at the camera. No, he was smiling fondly at the man taking the picture. And the picture had been taken on Sherlock’s phone. And Sherlock had kept it. Stored it somewhere. 

Look at it, he told himself. And do what Sherlock would do, and observe. And he scrolled through the pictures of Sherlock. And then back to the picture of him. And somehow, he just knew. Knew that fond smile was how he always looked at Sherlock. And suddenly it occurred to him that Sherlock knew that. Sherlock had to have seen it. Just as he had to have seen his own smile in the picture from the Christening. 

He turned off the light and lay on his back, pondering it all. He must have fallen asleep, but he woke to a knock on the door. Using his phone's torch to light his way he shuffled to the front door. 

He didn’t say a word as he opened the door to Sherlock and stepped aside to let him in. They regarded one another for a moment, and Sherlock quirked a small smile at him. Greg took a step closer, and brought his hand to Sherlock’s cheek, brushing the pad of his thumb against his cheekbone. 

“How long have you…”

“Always,” Sherlock whispered. “You?”

“Yeah.” Greg swallowed. He leaned a little closer and Sherlock met him as their lips connected in the softest of kisses.


End file.
